Coaches of master classes

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the year of the bicentenary of Petipa’s birth, there should be no need to convince anyone of the importance of continuity for the development of choreography. The most obvious confirmation of this fact is Marius Petipa himself. He was brought up by his father — a ballet dancer — and later, in his turn, raised a shining star of the Imperial stage in his daughter Maria. What is more, to the very end of his long life, Petipa kept on learning from illustrious colleagues such as Christian Johanson.

The art of choreography can only be studied in the flesh, with a tutor. Then, only after years of training and decades of professional dancing does it become possible to build your own conception of the «school». The outstanding ballet teacher Alexander Pushkin was a student of the renowned Nikolai Legat, and he made dancers not only of Rudolf Nureyev, Askold Makarov and Mikhail Baryshnikov, but also of Peter Pestov, who in turn shaped the talents of Alexei Ratmansky, Yuri Possokhov and Nikolai Tsiskaridze. This bond between the generations is priceless. It is the means by which the treasury of human culture is formed.

Each Dance Open tutor is a link in this endless chain that preserves and develops the traditions of the Russian ballet school — a chain of the finest workmanship.